CAMPFIRE CHECKPOINT: 02/10/2026

Hello my Fellows,

If you missed the Roundtable, it was a BIIIIG one but we’re here to get you all caught up.

I was joined by Will and Bretton to talk through what is coming next for Fellowship and, more specifically, what you can expect when we reset progression on October 22nd.

We talked about the end of Season 3, what the next few months of development look like on our road towards 1.0, a completely different approach to the journey towards Eternal, changes to Eternal itself, another big iteration on Itemization and, somehow, a brand new Dungeon? WILD.

This update is coming in pretty hot and a lot of what you’re about to read is still actively being developed. There are knobs to turn, numbers to change and some details we’re deliberately testing rather than presenting as final solutions.

That’s kind of the point.

If you missed the stream, you can catch the VOD here:

OCTOBER 22ND: THE NEXT RESET

That’s right. Fellowship will reset progression on October 22nd. This also marks the end of Early Access Season 3 but rather than moving directly into a traditional Season 4, we’re entering a different phase of development as we prepare Fellowship for 1.0.

A lot of the larger structural changes we’ve been working on simply can’t be bolted on to the version of Fellowship you’re currently playing without the wheels coming off. Systems are changing, things are being removed or rebuilt and at some point we need to get those changes into your hands so we can see how they actually behave with real players.

That means resets.

Our current plan looks something like this:

• October 22nd: Reset and our first major round of testing
• Late November/Early December: Another reset incorporating what we learn from October so we can go agane
• Fellowship 1.0: The full production

I like to think of it like a theatrical production (just me?!) where we have a tech rehearsal, followed by a dress rehearsal, followed by opening night. The important thing to understand is that the October 22nd update is not Fellowship 1.0. We’re going to intentionally try some pretty significant things, gather feedback and data, make changes and then go again.

HALLOWEEN RETURNS

The Stronghold will once again be going full-pumpkin and we’re bringing back the cosmetics from last year alongside some new things to chase.

This time around we’ll be using the Seasonal Challenge system to distribute rewards rather than simply asking you to play a Hero a certain number of times (RIP Quickplay). We’re still figuring out the exact split between things you’ll earn through Challenges and anything that may appear in the store.

One thing wedon’twant to do is turn this short testing window into another giant grind.

There will be another reset towards the end of November/beginning of December, so we aren’t planning another 10,000 Dungeon Rating-style reward that only the most dedicated players would have a realistic chance of reaching in that time.

The focus here is testing the new experience, with some cool Halloween stuff to chase along the way.

RETHINKING THE JOURNEY TO ETERNAL

This is probably the biggest structural change coming on October 22nd. Today, getting a Hero through Fellowship means progressing through our League structure before eventually reaching Eternal and while Leagues have done a somewhat useful job of setting short-term goals and introducing increasing difficulty, they’ve also created some problems.

Most importantly, every League and Difficulty creates another pool of players for Matchmaking. During Season 3 we still had around 16 different pools of players moving through this part of the game.

That works considerably better when everyone begins a Season at the same time. Join later, level an Alt or just progress at a different pace to everyone else and those queues can become significantly harder to fill. This is by far the biggest negativity driver in Fellowship and something we absolutely need to address.

Beyond that, for many of our more experienced players, Leagues have essentially become a chore to get through before reaching the version of Fellowship they actually want to play: Eternal. Meanwhile, players who are still learning Fellowship are continually being pushed towards increasingly complicated mechanics whether they’re ready for them or not.

We want to separate those experiences more clearly and we look forward to your feedback on how that feels after October 22nd.

THREE DIFFICULTY LEVELS

Instead of progressing through Contender, Adept, Champion and the other current Leagues, we’re experimenting with consolidating that journey into just three Matchmaking pools.

This is just placeholder, but you get the idea!

We’re aiming to create a system that allows players to engage with Fellowship at a complexity that better matches where they are.

Easy

This is intended for people who are still learning Fellowship, learning tab-targeting games in general or simply want a more relaxed Dungeon experience.

Some of the mechanics that require heavier group coordination will be disabled or made much more forgiving.

Things like Interrupts and Dispels will still exist, but missing them won’t punish the group nearly as heavily.

Medium

This starts introducing the full suite of Dungeon mechanics.

Interrupts, Dispels and the additional mechanics found on enemies and Bosses become significantly more important and the experience begins moving much closer to Fellowship as you know it today.

Hard

This is intended to deliver the complete Dungeon experience for experienced players. All mechanics are active and mistakes are going to matter. It’ll also be the fastest route through gearing towards Eternal.

Once unlocked, these difficulty options are intended to be account-wide, making the experience of gearing additional Heroes considerably faster for experienced players.

GEARING UP

We’re also making some huge changes to the way that you’ll acquire loot on this journey. Rather than Dungeon rewards being disconnected from your current progression, we’re testing a system where rewards scale from the Item Level you currently have equipped.

Higher complexity means faster progression and we’re also adding considerably more bad-luck protection.

Instead of repeatedly receiving upgrades for a slot that’s already way ahead of everything else, the system will specifically look at your lowest Item Level slots when deciding where those guaranteed upgrades should go.

The goal is a much smoother journey where you’re consistently moving forward rather than waiting for that one pair of pants that apparently decided it never wants to drop. Enemies in this pre-Eternal experience will also scale individually against each player.

NOTE: this does not apply to Eternal.

Once you reach Eternal the guardrails come off and the normal endgame progression begins.

SO HOW DO I UNLOCK ETERNAL?

Our current thinking is that simply reaching an Item Level requirement shouldn’t be enough.

If someone has exclusively played the easiest version of Fellowship, where certain mechanics have intentionally been made less punishing, dropping them directly into Eternal probably isn’t going to be a great experience for them or their group.

You’ll progress through those first complexity levels relatively quickly, then reach a combination of gear and Dungeon completion requirements that show you’re ready for Eternal. The exact thresholds are still being worked on and we’ll likely want to tweak those dials once players give us meaningful feedback after seeing how it feels in practice.

There also won’t be mandatory Capstones blocking your progression through this new introductory mode. Yep, no Capstones until Eternal.

The goal here is to get players into matches quickly, teach Fellowship’s mechanics at a sensible pace and then get players who want the full endgame experience into Eternal.

ETERNAL ISN’T GOING ANYWHERE

Eternal is still very much Eternal.

We’re deliberately trying to create more separation between the introductory experience and our endgame rather than turning Eternal itself into something more casual. Though we do want to experiment with the overall structure.

One of the problems with Eternal today is the sheer number of Difficulty levels. At the time of the Roundtable, our highest players were pushing 70s and that’s way beyond ideal for what we intend. Many of those levels are relatively small increases over the previous one, which means more matchmaking fragmentation without necessarily creating a dramatically different gameplay experience.

For this reset we’re looking at compressing that curve down to roughly 32 Difficulty levels while maintaining a similar overall range of challenge. This is another experiment rather than our final answer for Eternal.

We’re also currently targeting a smaller active Dungeon pool for the reset with 8 Adventure Dungeons and 2 Capstones.

The intention is that you’ll encounter those Dungeons more frequently, learn them more deeply and have a better chance of finding other players at the Difficulty you’re trying to complete.

Exactly how the Dungeon selection and Capstone structure is presented within Eternal is something we’re still working on.

ITEMISATION: THE NEXT ITERATION

We also spent a pretty sizeable chunk of the Roundtable talking about Itemization.

Itemization 2.0 introduced a lot more depth through modifiers, Blessings, Traits, Gems, Relics and all of the other systems interacting with your gear but the downside is that we currently throw almost all of those systems at you at once. For new players, and pretty much for everyone, it can be overwhelming.

A brand-new player can get lucky in their first few Dungeons, receive a complicated piece of gear and suddenly be introduced to several systems before they’ve even unlocked the abilities those systems interact with. We want the onboarding to make more sense and to introduce those layers more deliberately.

That gives us opportunities for meaningful power spikes while also giving players the time to actually understand what each system does.

There’s a lot more to this work than we could realistically fit into one Roundtable so stay tuned for more details on how this is shaping up going into the reset.

LESS GEAR SUDOKU

A big goal of these Itemization changes is also making endgame gearing less frustrating. At the moment, changing one piece of gear can sometimes turn into a game of Sudoku where fixing one part of your build creates problems somewhere else.

We want gear slots to have clearer identities so it becomes much easier to understand what you’re looking for and swap pieces around without dismantling your entire build. We’re also looking at reducing some unnecessary randomness.

For example, instead of items rolling additional fixed random stats that you have no control over, we can move more of that power into stronger modifiers that you can interact with.

Defensive Traits are another area we’re looking at. For the most part, they’re undesirable unless you have an edge case at the highest levels of Eternal, but currently create additional noise in the Trait pool for everyone trying to roll the Traits their build actually needs.

We’re looking at moving that defensive power elsewhere while separating Major and Heroic Traits into their own pools, making it considerably easier to target the things you’re actually looking for.

There are also more quality-of-life and economy changes being worked on around crafting, Gems, Relics and playing multiple Heroes that we weren’t able to get into during the stream.

More info to come soon.

NEW DUNGEON? IN THIS ECONOMY!?

While a huge amount of the team’s focus has been on systems, our Dungeon team hasn’t stopped cooking. The upcoming reset gives us a great opportunity to put one of the new Dungeons being developed for 1.0 into your hands early and get feedback on it.

Internally we’ve been calling it Treetop Village which isn’t very dramatic, but the name currently being explored is “Crown of the Wild”.

This Dungeon takes us somewhere quite different from much of Fellowship’s current lineup. We’re exploring a new druidic faction with a much stronger focus on wild magic, nature and bestial creatures.

Crown of the Wild will be a regular Adventure Dungeon rather than a Capstone and is currently planned to be one of the eight Dungeons in the active October 22nd rotation.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

There are only a few weeks between now and October 22nd and there is still a lot we want to talk about.

The Patch Notes for this update are going to be pretty substantial and there are many changes, particularly around Itemization and quality-of-life, that we simply didn’t have time to cover during the Roundtable.

We’re looking at ways to give you more context around those changes before the update lands so keep an eye out for more information closer to the reset where we can focus more heavily on answering questions once some of these systems have firmed up.

October 22nd is an opportunity for us to try things, learn what works, find the things that don’t, make changes and take all of those lessons into the next reset and eventually Fellowship 1.0.

Three weeks.

Halloween. A reset. New progression. Itemization changes. Eternal changes.

And apparently dinosaurs in the new Dungeon? That’s pretty cool.

See you in the Stronghold <3

The CR Devs